Buffalo Mill Historic District
National Register Listing
Street Address:
Village of Buffalo and immediate surroundings (Union County)
NRHP Nomination
Record Number:
S10817744024
Description and Narrative:
The Buffalo Mill Historic District is significant as an excellent collection of historic resources associated with the textile industry in South Carolina from the early-to-mid-twentieth century. The mill complex, including such resources as the main mill, mill office, power house, ice factory, mill warehouse, company store, and company bank/drug store, is a particularly intact collection of early-twentieth century mill and mill-associated buildings. It is also significant for its association with W. B. Smith Whaley, a prominent engineer whose firm designed numerous textile mills in the state, including mills in Camden, Columbia, Lancaster, Orangeburg, and Union. The mill village, including supervisors’ and operatives’ housing as well as auxiliary resources such as a school and a baseball field/park, is a particularly intact collection of other mill-associated resources. The mill complex and village, together with their setting, represent perhaps the best extant example of a South Carolina mill town. The district includes 192 contributing properties and 98 noncontributing properties. The mill building and most other Whaley-designed buildings at Buffalo are typical industrial designs with applied stylized Romanesque Revival detailing. This is achieved primarily through round-headed arches, polychromed brick, and decorative brick work including belt courses and corbelling. A major exception is the mill company office which has a less traditional exterior with its pyramidal roofing, battered pier belvedere, wide bracketed overhang and lavish American Renaissance interior. The mill housing varies from large, free-classic, Queen Anne supervisor’s houses, to shingle-style bungalows, to simple, one-story, lateral-gable, workers residences. Listed in the National Register October 10, 1990.
Period of Significance:
1929;1901 – 1902;1934
Level of Significance:
State
Area of Significance:
Industry;Architecture
National Register Determination:
listed
Date of Certification:
October 10 1990
